A. Field of Invention
This invention pertains to a device for cutting tubular or ring shaped cores of elongated tube material made for example of cardboard and the like, and more particularly to a cutter device which can be used to make cores of preselected axial lengths very precisely and automatically.
B. Description of the Prior Art
Cores of the type described above are used for winding very long and relatively thin materials such as metal bands and the like. Frequently this winding operation, especially for metal bands, is performed automatically by placing several such cores on rotating mandrels at the end of a slitter. A long, relatively wide metal sheet is fed into the slitter which then automatically slits the sheet into a large number of bands, each metal band being wound simultaneously on one of the cores. However in order for this operation to be performed satisfactorily, the cores must be cut accurately in the axial direction.
Core cutters are known in the art in which a tube is rotated with this distal end positioned adjacent to a stop. A knife is then used to cut off a core after which the tube is shifted axially until it again contacts the stop. However this type of device does not produce cores with the required accuracy. Moreover the whole operating is slow because after each cutting step, the new core may be removed by hand, and the tube must then be repositioned.